


A Crossing by Water in Winter

by sophiahelix



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Buffy Back in the Day Challenge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-12
Updated: 2003-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several ways to make things seem better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Crossing by Water in Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Elements: Giles, Oz, a line from Frank O'Hara's "On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington Crossing The Delaware At The Museum Of Modern Art" woven in, not quoted.

Lying on the floor and listening to complaint rock wasn't really Oz's thing. As a teenage rock guitarist, he was kind of required to do it from time to time, out of loyalty to his kind, but for the most part, he didn't really get the point of wallowing. He didn't even _own_ much complaint rock, actually, but there were a few Joy Division albums in with the rest of the vinyl, and every month or so they'd feature in the rotation instead of Floyd and Zeppelin.

Every twenty-eight days, really, if he was honest. When the moonlight slid over his skin, quick and smooth like a knife being sharpened, and the outdoors began to smell way, way too interesting, he got why other people would come home from school, flop on the bed, crack open a Sprite and a package of Oreos and just _wallow_ for a while. It didn't exactly make anything better, but sometimes it gave him a feeling of...control, maybe. Like if he had to be unhappy, at least he was doing it to himself.

Oz wondered, sometimes, how other people dealt with the bad stuff. He knew that Willow made herself busy with school and magic, and Buffy probably went out and slayed things, and Xander definitely seemed like the wallowing type, though probably with country music instead of rock. But what about adults? People died every week in this town, a lot of them kids. How did their parents deal with it?

He thought that, maybe, a lot of them just didn't deal, even _before_ their kids were dead. He knew a lot of people whose parents never noticed where they were or what they were doing -- his own included -- and maybe that was a kind of pre-emptive strike against grief. You couldn't really miss your dead kids if you hadn't paid much attention to them when they were alive.

And then sometimes there were people you _did_ miss. That was the part about living on a Hellmouth that really sucked -- losing people you let yourself care about, even if you hardly knew them.

Miss Calendar's funeral was coming up, sometime this weekend, he guessed. That was when they usually had funerals. He'd see them on Saturday and Sundays, driving by one of the cemeteries, the little knot of mourners gathered outside a mausoleum or grave, though ground space was getting scarce these days, and think how weird it was that nobody _got_ it. It was almost like there was some kind of Hellmouth mojo that stopped people from thinking the obvious, even when it was pretty likely that the dead person would be walking around in a couple of days. Weird town, where the ones who got mauled by monsters were the lucky ones.

Oz didn't think Buffy would be mourning right now. This week at school, she'd had this tight, focused look in her eyes, like she'd kill you if you moved too fast. Xander probably wasn't dealing real well either, what with the Cordelia thing on top of this, and Oz bet he wasn't the only one doing some wallowing right now. Willow, he knew, would be going crazy with the researching, since he'd already held her last weekend while she cried it all out.

He didn't know about Giles, though. Giles was usually good with that old stiff upper lip, being British and all, but he'd heard from Willow about the fight at the factory, and that didn't sound like the librarian he knew. You kind of got used to thinking of your teachers like educational robots who told you what to do, then powered down for the night in the school basement (though in this town, who knew?), but he was starting to know Giles better than that now. Things had to be pretty bad for him to crack like that.

Thinking about Giles made Oz feel a little...guilty. It wasn't like any of it was his fault, but the guy let him use his library as a wolf cage every month, and he and the other three kids had been taking care of the Hellmouth way before Oz even knew there _was_ a Hellmouth. He was making up for it now, doing what he could, but there was still some kind of debt there.

He got up and pulled the needle off the turntable, halting the wails of recorded pain, and grabbed his keys off the dresser, shrugging into his big coat. It was cold outside, and the van's heating system was crap, so he blew on each of his hands in turn as he drove, noticing that his blue nail polish was getting nice and cracked, the way he liked it. He hadn't had nail polish on for a full moon before, and he wondered if he'd have blue claws. That would be kind of funny, really, if it weren't...horrible. He'd have to ask Willow.

It was pretty easy to guess where Giles was, since his apartment was probably the last place on earth he wanted to be right now. Oz guessed, actually, that Giles had been sleeping in the library all week, since he hadn't shaved very well and he'd worn the same shirt two days in a row. The lights were all on when Oz got there, but the parking lot was empty, which didn't surprise him. Everyone else was dealing in their own ways, somewhere else.

All the doors were open, as usual -- locks couldn't keep out the things that were truly scary -- and Oz walked down the corridors to the library, hoping that this was actually the right thing to do. Most people seemed to give grieving people lots of space, but he kind of thought that was more about them than the people who were grieving. It was easier just to pretend that you were being thoughtful, he realized, than to admit you didn't know what to say.

He opened the door slowly, trying not to startle Giles, but it didn't matter anyhow, since Giles was nowhere in sight. Oz checked the office, then wandered the stacks, and finally found him sitting by the Biography H-P shelf, just staring.

Oz eased into Giles's line of vision, but the librarian didn't even blink. He sat down on the floor in front of him, cross-legged and leaning back against Biography A-H.

"Hey," he said.

Giles didn't move.

Oz remembered a dog he'd gotten from the pound years ago, one his parents didn't want him to get. It had been scruffy and shaking and scared, and for the first couple of days it wouldn't do anything but scarf down the food they gave it and hide in the laundry room behind the dryer. One day Oz had come in and just sat on the floor to read. Eventually the dog came out to investigate, snuffling against the fabric of his jeans and licking at his dirty Vans, and had even, at last, let Oz scratch between his ears. A few more days of that, and the stray dog had turned into a pet dog.

Of course, a couple of weeks later they'd found it dead and mangled in the street. At the time his dad said it was probably coyotes, but he knew better now.

Giles was obviously not a dog, but it seemed like sitting still and being quiet was probably the best thing to do this time too. So Oz sat, and waited.

Giles looked down after a few minutes, licking his lips and twisting his hands in his lap. It seemed like he was about to speak when he opened his mouth, but he closed it again without a word.

Oz tried to think of something to say. Oz tried to think if there _was_ anything to say. The guy's girlfriend was dead, and it was kind of Buffy's fault, in a way. He guessed Buffy would have to go after Angel now, but it wasn't like that would bring Miss Calendar back. Things were probably going to have to get worse before they got better.

He thought about how it would be. They were going to have to find this vampire and fight him, along with the rest of the vampire posse, and _that_ wasn't going to be easy. Buffy would have to kill someone she used to love, and, Oz thought, someone she maybe still loved. And even if everything went fine, Miss Calendar would still be dead and buried, and maybe Giles would still look this way, like he was lost and wasn't ever coming back.

Oz didn't know where he fit into it all. He wanted to do what he could, but he couldn't help feeling that he was trying to fix something he hadn't broken. Now that he knew about vampires and monsters, it seemed like he should do something about them, but then, he _was_ a monster too. Everything he used to believe about good guys and bad guys was just kid stuff, he thought.

Giles was looking up again, now, and in his blank eyes there was some kind of understanding beyond his own pain, as if together they were making a crossing by water in winter to a shore other than that the bridge reached for. Nothing was easy anymore. Maybe it was this stuff, this horror movie Hellmouth stuff, or maybe it was just getting older.

"Oz," Giles said quietly. "It'll be all right."

Not really, of course, and it was pretty ironic to be comforted by the person he'd come to comfort, but it made him feel better all the same.

"Maybe," Oz answered. "Thanks."


End file.
